


The Nature of Fish

by Chiclet



Category: Aion (Video Game)
Genre: One Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-19
Updated: 2016-08-19
Packaged: 2018-08-09 16:34:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,096
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7809184
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chiclet/pseuds/Chiclet
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“What’s so funny?” she growls.</p><p>“You,” is the prompt reply.  Not interested in water, he’s sprawled on the grass above the sand line, one booted foot tapping against the wind. “You’ve been in there for an hour and all you’ve managed to catch is wet.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Nature of Fish

Cool, slippery, impossible to catch. The water flashes in the sunlight as she lunges forward, hands outstretched. The wave ripples across the surface of the shallows to swamp a lizard who was only trying to sun itself. The fish slips away yet again.

From the bank, he laughs and she straightens in frustrated pique.  

“What’s so funny?” she growls.

“You,” is the prompt reply.  Not interested in water, he’s sprawled on the grass above the sand line, one booted foot tapping against the wind. “You’ve been in there for an hour and all you’ve managed to catch is wet.” His smile makes it hard to be angry, but she tries anyways.

“Wet is good for the soul,” is the best she can come up with on the spur of the moment though and he laughs again, warm and deep. She scowls down at the water around her knees, taunting her with the shadows of life darting through it. Would it be so much to ask to just catch _one_? She’s supposed to be practicing this stuff on something other than plants but so far, all she’s apparently managed to do is provide entertainment.

She suppresses the urge to kick at the water, picking instead at the damp blouse clinging to her ribs. She wrings the tail ends as if it’s going to help her speed. The leather strapping that normally holds it bound to her is on the grass, along with her boots, pants and her swords. The first might shrink, the last might rust and she’s not willing to risk either of those things.  

There is no safety anywhere in Elysea but there are definitely moments of calm. If all of Asmodae was to pour out of the sky a heartbeat from now, she is three strides from the killing edges and it would only take one before his first defiant answer would be written in flame against the descent. She is as safe here as she would be on the streets of Sanctum - which is to say she’d rather be hock-deep in a river, trying to pass the latest series of tests given by the Nobelium than be cooped up even one more day in a classroom.

She puts her fists on her hips, nibbling at the corner of her mouth. _Plants_ , was the lesson, _concern themselves only with growth, with the absence or presence of light, with the fuse of aether rising in their sap and veins. Once you have mastered the slow surge of what that means, then next you must embrace the larger complexities - ribbits, gumi, modida. If you are feeling ambitious, students_ , was the dry continuation, _then hold the cliona to the heart, and return to tell me what you find in theirs._

Cliona were beyond her skills but cypri? Stupid, slow, impossible fish. As if to emphasize the problem, one nibbles on her leg.

“Relax, Kaiika,” he says as she jumps. “You’re your own worst enemy. Want me to show you how it’s done?” He’s nibbling himself on a stalk of ruko, the puff-down end scattering random seeds on his clothing.  For a second, she wants to shove his perfect face in the grass. He probably got through this part in five minutes, including the time it took to dress for the occasion.

“No,” she sulks, then sighs. “Fine, whatever. But this is not as easy as it looks.”

“It’s not as hard as you’re making it out to be. Relax. Stop trying so hard, little larail. Think water.”

“Think... water. What am I, a stormcloud?”

He laughs again, the sound she is growing to love. “You have the face of one.” He holds out both hands then as she takes a sloshing step towards the shore. “Easy, easy. No, I promise you. Think water. Close your eyes and hear the river - listen to the sound of it, the feel against your skin.” His voice deepens into autumn and somewhat unwillingly she turns back to her lessons. She closes her eyes and tries not to think about the clammy fabric welded to her sides and thighs. “Think water, think fish. Feel the sunlight on your back, the stones between your toes. You glide across the one, move under the other. Think of cypri, not jumpy larail. _Be_ cypri.”

She twitches her nose against her own laughter. At least it sounds better coming from him instead of the priest-mage whose sonorous tones always make him sound like he’s talking from the bottom of a canyon, imparting the wisdom of all ages. Be cypri. Okay, it can’t be that hard to think like a fish. Right?

At one point she has to rub her nose, but slowly the sunlight and the wind calm her breathing. She feels the pattern of it. Water moves, flows, but is never absent. Sunlight reaches but fails to warm her feet, everything is cool and capricious with currents. Cypri are here, glowing with aether behind the red flicker of her eyelids, holding to Aion’s grace with fish intent, swarming to food, fleeing from threat.

She is no threat. She is a cypri of air as they are of water. Kin, she is, and close. Closer to cypri than she is to human, Aion above them both. She reaches down in a dream and touches the sleek back against her leg.

It is not a plant, to dream in long, slow bursts of sightless motion. Imperatives both alien and animal flicker through her mind even as her fingers caress its silver side. To live in water is to breathe Aion, to feel aether through gills a thousand fold deep and flexing, to understand without thought. To hunt the lesser creatures, to flee from the larger ones, to surge to the shallows when they are warm and to move into the cool deeps to mate. The larger pattern made up of the smaller chaos, all of it called - cypri.

She opens her eyes as the fish swims away, unhurried and unharmed for the sharing. Astonished, she stares at the back of her hands, frightened suddenly that she might see scales winking silver in the sun.

“Yes?” he asks. Daeva-rich, like butter on the freshest bread.

“Oh, yes,” she breathes. “Oh, yes! That was _great!_ ”

He laughs again as she clambers exuberantly out of the water, splashing everywhere. She lands on his chest, pushing him down to wind cool arms around his warm neck. His eyes crinkle with understanding and something else.

She gives him her first kiss flavored with the memory of what it was to be water.


End file.
